September 2022

An Adventurous Spirit

Although I’ve had the pleasure to edit the Lowestoft Chronicle regularly for the past thirteen years, I’ve not been quite so consistent when it comes to the magazine’s anthology series. The previous collection, The Vicarious Traveler, appeared three years ago. Since then, I’ve been stacking up writing projects until my to-do list resembles a weekly grocery list. The tenth Lowestoft Chronicle Anthology was shunted so far down the list it almost dropped off. The abundance of quality poetry and prose in the magazine’s quarterly editions made me take a closer look at that gargantuan to-do list. It was time, I realized, to shuffle things about a bit and make time for An Adventurous Spirit. True to its title, it became an ambitious project—bigger, bolder, and, arguably, better than earlier volumes.

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Lowestoft Chronicle #51

Issue 51 of Lowestoft Chronicle

The autumn edition (#51) of Lowestoft Chronicle features fiction by Barbara Bottner, Anne Dorrian, Andrew Edwards, James Gallant, Sharon Frame Gay, and Mark Jacobs, poetry by Cristina Legarda and Joan Mazza, and creative nonfiction by Craig Dicker, Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin, and Lynette Yetter. Among the entertaining stories is “After the Meltdown, On the Hunt,” a provocative dystopic fiction yarn by Mark Jacobs, author of the critically acclaimed novels Stone Cowboy (Soho Press) and A Handful of Kings (Simon & Schuster), in which bankrolled big-game hunters vie for the ultimate prize. The issue also contains my interview with Mark, which covers, among other things, his writing career, valuable advice from mentors, and the Latin American media attack on his most famous short story. Remarkably prolific for many years, Mark’s excellent stories appear in dozens of prestigious venues. As regards this small literary magazine, here’s his splendid assessment of Lowestoft Chronicle: “For those of us driven to know the world, to read it, to write it, Lowestoft Chronicle is an essential way station on the highway. Good writing on things that matter, a clean presentation that’s easy on the eye, and variety that coheres around taste. Check it out.”

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The Big Grab & The Savage Breast by John Trinian (Introductions by Brian Greene and Nicholas Litchfield)

A John Trinian Twofer: The Big Grab/The Savage Breast

The John Trinian (aka Zekial Marko) revival continues with this latest twofer from Stark House Press, The Big Grab / The Savage Breast. The author, a very proficient writer of crime novels, found success with numerous works, most notably Scratch a Thief and The Big Grab, each written in the early 1960s. Both of those crime tales became movies—the first filmed as Once a Thief, the latter as Any Number Can Win. Trinian wrote the screenplays.

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